Can Empowering Leaders Affect Subordinates’ Well-Being and Careers Because They Encourage Subordinates’ Job Crafting Behaviors?

Abstract

This study examined the effects of empowering leadership on employees’ well-being and career outcomes through their job crafting behaviors over three time points during a 2-month period. With 325 full-time employees, results from structural equation modeling demonstrated that empowering leadership was positively associated with employees’ job crafting behaviors even after controlling for proactive personality. Job crafting resulted in lower levels of physical and depressive symptoms and higher levels of career satisfaction and commitment. Together, these findings highlight the role of empowering leadership in encouraging and facilitating job crafting behaviors of employees, which in turn leads to subjective career success as well as physical and psychological well-being.